The Life of John Marshall Volume I Part 22

"He is a boy and is indisputably in love in this good year 1763, and he courts and sighs and tries to capture his pretty little sweetheart, but like his friend George Was.h.i.+ngton, fails. The young lady will not be captured!" (Susan Randolph's account of Jefferson's wooing Rebecca Burwell; _Green Bag_, viii, 481.)

[487] Tradition says that George Was.h.i.+ngton met a like fate at the hands of Edward Ambler, Jacquelin's brother, who won Mary Cary from the young Virginia soldier. While this legend has been exploded, it serves to bring to light the personal attractiveness of the Amblers; for Miss Cary was very beautiful, heiress of a moderate fortune, and much sought after. It was Mary Cary's sister by whom Was.h.i.+ngton was captivated.

(Colonel Wilson Miles Cary, in Pecquet du Bellet, i, 24-25.)

[488] Mrs. Carrington to her sister Nancy; _Atlantic Monthly_, lx.x.xiv, 547. Of the letters which John Marshall wrote home while in the army, not one has been preserved.

[489] _Ib._

[490] _Ib._

[491] Mrs. Carrington to her sister Nancy; _Atlantic Monthly_, lx.x.xiv, 547.

[492] _Hist. Mag._, iii, 165. While this article is erroneous as to dates, it is otherwise accurate.

[493] _Ib._, 167.

[494] Mrs. Carrington to her sister Nancy; _Atlantic Monthly_, lx.x.xiv, 547.

[495] _Hist. Mag._, iii, 167.

[496] Mrs. Carrington to her sister Nancy; _Atlantic Monthly_, lx.x.xiv, 547.

[497] _Supra_, chap. II.

[498] Mrs. Carrington to her sister Nancy; _Atlantic Monthly_, lx.x.xiv, 547.

[499] "Notes on Virginia": Jefferson; _Works_: Ford, iv, 65.

[500] Mrs. Carrington to her sister Nancy; _supra._ William and Mary was the first American inst.i.tution of learning to adopt the modern lecture system. (Tyler; _Williamsburg_, 153.) The lecture method was inaugurated Dec. 29, 1779 (_ib._, 174-75), only four months before Marshall entered.

[501] John Brown to Wm. Preston, Feb. 15, 1780; _W. and M. C. Q._, ix, 76.

[502] Mrs. Carrington to her sister Nancy; MS.

[503] See _infra._

[504] The Reverend James Madison, Professor of Natural Philosophy and Mathematics; James McClung, Professor of Anatomy and Medicine; Charles Bellini, Professor of Modern Languages; George Wythe, Professor of Law; and Robert Andrews, Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy.

(_History of William and Mary College_, Baltimore, 1870, 70-71.) There was also a fencing school. (John Brown to Wm. Preston, Feb. 15, 1780; _W. and M. C. Q._, ix, 76.)

[505] _History of William and Mary College_, Baltimore, 1870, 45.

"Thirty Students and three professors joined the army at the beginning of the Revolutionary War." (_Ib._, 41.) Cornwallis occupied Williamsburg, June, 1781, and made the president's house his headquarters. (Tyler: _Williamsburg_, 168.)

[506] Fithian, 107.

[507] John Brown to Wm. Preston, Jan. 26, 1780; _W. and M. C. Q._, ix, 75. Seventeen years later the total cost to a student for a year at the college was one hundred and fifty to one hundred and seventy dollars.

(La Rochefoucauld, iii, 49-56.) The annual salary of the professors was four hundred dollars and that of the president was six hundred dollars.

[508] In Marshall's time the college laws provided that "No liquors shall be furnished or used at [the college students'] table except beer, cider, toddy or spirits and water." (_History of William and Mary College_ (Baltimore, 1870), 44; and see Fithian, Feb. 12, 1774, 106-07.)

Twelve years after Marshall took his hasty law course at William and Mary College, a college law was published prohibiting "the drinking of spirituous liquors (except in that moderation which becomes the prudent and industrious student)." (_History of William and Mary College_, 44.)

In 1769 the Board of Visitors formally resolved that for professors to marry was "contrary to the principles on which the College was founded, and their duty as Professors"; and that if any professor took a wife "his Professors.h.i.+p be immediately vacated." (Resolution of Visitors, Sept. 1, 1769; _ib._, 45.) This law was disregarded; for, at the time when Marshall attended William and Mary, four out of the five professors were married men.

The college laws on drinking were merely a reflection of the customs of that period. (See chaps. VII and VIII.) This historic inst.i.tution of learning turned out some of the ablest and best-educated men of the whole country. Wythe, Bland, Peyton and Edmund Randolph, Taylor of Caroline, Nicholas, Pendleton, Madison, and Jefferson are a few of the William and Mary's remarkable products. Every one of the most distinguished families of Virginia is found among her alumni. (See Catalogue of Alumni, _History of William and Mary College_, 73-147. An error in this list puts John Marshall in the cla.s.s of 1775 instead of that of 1780; also, he did not graduate.)

[509] _Infra_, chap. VII.

[510] La Rochefoucauld, iii, 49; and see Schoepf, ii, 79-80.

William Wirt, writing twenty-three years after Marshall's short attendance, thus describes the college: "They [Virginians] have only one publick seminary of learning.... This college ... in the n.i.g.g.ardly spirit of parsimony which they dignify with the name of economy, these democrats have endowed with a few despicable fragments of surveyors'

fees &c. thus converting their national academy into a mere _lazaretto_ and feeding its ... highly respectable professors, like a band of beggars, on the sc.r.a.ps and crumbs that fall from the financial table.

And, then, instead of aiding and energizing the police of the college, by a few civil regulations, they permit their youth to run riot in all the wildness of dissipation." (Wirt: _The British Spy_, 131, 132.)

[511] "Notes on Virginia": Jefferson; _Works_: Ford, iv, 69.

[512] Chastellux, 299. It is difficult to reconcile Jefferson's description of the college building with that of the French traveler.

Possibly the latter was influenced by the French professor, Bellini.

[513] John Brown to Col. Wm. Preston, July 6, 1780: _W. and M. C. Q._, ix, 80.

[514] John Brown to Col. Wm. Preston, July 6, 1780; _W. and M. C. Q._, ix, 80.

[515] Records, Phi Beta Kappa Society of William and Mary College, printed in _W. and M. C. Q._, iv, 236.

[516] Dr. Lyon G. Tyler, now President of William and Mary College, thinks that this date is approximately correct.

[517] Records, Phi Beta Kappa Society of William and Mary College; printed in, _W. and M. C. Q._, iv, 236.

[518] See _infra._

[519] Marshall's Notebook; MS. See _infra._

[520] Betsy Ambler to Mildred Smith, 1780; _Atlantic Monthly_, lx.x.xiv, 536.

[521] See _infra._

[522] Marshall to his wife, _infra._

[523] Marshall could have had at least one year at William and Mary, for the college did not close until June, 1781. Also he could have continued to attend for several weeks after he left in June, 1780; for student John Brown's letters show that the college was still open on July 20 of that year.

[524] County Court Minutes of Fauquier County, Virginia, 1773-80, 473.

[525] _Autobiography._

[526] Marshall, with other officers, did go to Philadelphia in January or February of 1777 to be inoculated for smallpox (Marshall to Colonel Stark, June 12, 1832, supporting latter's pension claim; MSS. Rev. War, S. F. no. 7592, Pension Bureau); but evidently he was not treated or the treatment was not effective.

[527] First, the written permission to be inoculated had to be secured from all the justices of the county; next, all the neighbors for two miles around must consent--if only one of them refused, the treatment could not be given. Any physician was fined ten thousand dollars, if he inoculated without these restrictions. (Hening, ix, 371.) If any one was stricken with smallpox, he was carried to a remote cabin in the woods where a doctor occasionally called upon him. (La Rochefoucauld, iii, 79-80; also De Warville, 433.)